Sunday Almanac: Fly me to the War Moon

That’s… no moon?

This isn’t The Official Pocket Tactics Review of Star Realms (Neumann will be bringing those particular tablets down from Mount Hexmap this week) but I’ve gotten a few online matches in since the game dropped for iOS on Thursday and I couldn’t resist writing about it.

My hopes for the quality of the Star Realms app were sky-high when I played the PC beta back in June. I’m disappointed to say that the mobile app doesn’t quite live up to potential. Ascension, the current king of digital deck-builders, need not fear being toppled just yet. Star Realms is, frankly, a poor experience on a phone — but the foibles are forgivable on a tablet. More than that — they’re worth putting up with because the game itself is really, really good.

One quirk of Ascension is that you’re never 100% sure who’s winning until all of the victory points are tallied up at the very end, a quality the game shares with Euro board games like Carcassonne. It’s like playing Russian roulette by taking up unhealthy diets — maybe you beat the other guy but you’re not gonna know for a while.

Star Realms, by contrast, doesn’t give any inherent victory point value to the cards. Instead, the game is about directly knocking out your opponent’s hitpoints before she knocks out yours. The hitpoint pools (“authority” in Star Realms argot) are never in doubt, which creates more palpable end-game drama than Ascension ever can with its nebulous accounting. You know when you’re in a close game, and it’s really exciting as a result. Star Realms is maybe one expansion pack away from true greatness.

Sunday links below.

•  A Blu-Ray release of the original, un-adulterated, Han-shooting-first Star Wars trilogy is reportedly in the offing. Disney demonstrating an extraordinary degree of good sense with their new acquisition.

• Vulcan, Alberta want to build a “working” Star Trek starship. They just need, ahem, $2 billion to do it with.

• Sharks attempt to devour the internet. Luddites.

• How to be polite. Wow. That sounds hard.

• The NSA is said to be working on a computer program called MonsterMind that can wage cyberwar autonomously. Didn’t these guys see Dr. Strangelove? Or (deep cut!) Colossus: The Forbin Project?